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Subject: 
Re: Brickshelf Status
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.general
Date: 
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 17:04:50 GMT
Viewed: 
5674 times
  
In lugnet.announce.brickshelf, Kevin Loch wrote:
I have not posted until now because there was too much uncertainty about
how (or if) this was going to work out.

Due to financial reasons, Brickshelf was no longer in a viable position to
continue operating.  As our costs are billed monthly, any shutdown would occur
at the end of a calendar month.  I decided that 15 days was enough time for
everyone to copy their files.  Turning it off completely for a few days was
intended to send the message that this is serious and get everyones attention so
they could use the remaining time wisely.  It also gave everyone an opportunity
to see what would break when it did finally shut down.

In hindsight I should have handled this differently but it's too late for that
now.

I had long ago written off various ides for charging recurring fees because
AFOLs and geeks in general expect everything on the web to be free.

What turned this around is the totally unexpected volume of email I received
from what appear to be regular people.  Many of these people expressed an
interest in paying some modest fee to keep the site running, if only there was
a way to do that.

In addition, I had underestimated the extent to which things would break
on other sites with Brickshelf gone.  It was clear after the "test" shutdown
that some long lasting solution would be needed to at least keep old content
available in some way or I would not be able to sleep at night.

So we are going to try something new and see if it works.   The site will
continue to work as it does now for free users.   Paying users will have
the opportunity to have greater visibility of their folders (that pass
moderation and are not junk/avatars).  Of course paying users would
also not see ads nor have ads on their folders.

To those wondering why maj.com was unaffected:  It has
a tiny fraction (< 10%) of the traffic that Brickshelf gets While many
of you are aware of it, many more brickshelf users are not and it is possible
for me to run that site out of pocket at it's current size.  This is one
reason there were no instructions posted to simply move over there.

For those wondering if this was some elaborate stunt:  I have a very
full time job and this distraction is the last thing I needed to deal
with right now.  I did what I thought was necessary given the financial
circumstances.  I am still taking a risk in continuing this but the
tremendous show of support has convinced me it is the right thing to do.

Final note:
It has come to my attention that some people have been impersonating me
on various forums.  LUGNET is the only LEGO related forum I have ever posted
on (other than r.t.l in the old days) and it's user authentication system
should give you reasonable assurance that it really is me.


Kevin,

While I've forgotten my password (and thus, don't upload to my account), I do
not have a problem paying a bit to keep brickshelf up and running.  I don't use
it extensively, but I think it's worth some money to keep it going.

Scott Lyttle



Message is in Reply To:
  Brickshelf Status
 
I have not posted until now because there was too much uncertainty about how (or if) this was going to work out. Due to financial reasons, Brickshelf was no longer in a viable position to continue operating. As our costs are billed monthly, any (...) (17 years ago, 20-Jul-07, to lugnet.announce.brickshelf) !! 

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